Policy capacity and evidence-based policy in the public service

ABSTRACT

Governments in many jurisdictions have called for an increase in ‘evidence-based’ policy-making. However, the international evidence-based policy movement has so far shown little progress in transforming the way that public policy is formulated and implemented. Much research on evidence-based policy has focused on political interference and contextual frames of reference as barriers to the uptake of research evidence. With the support of data from a survey of over 2,000 Australian public servants, we argue that individual and organizational deficits can leave the public service structurally unprepared for an engagement with diverse forms of evidence, including academic research in particular.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy capacity
• evidence-based policy
• research utilization

Acknowledgement

The authors would also like to acknowledge the work of Paul Boreham, Michele Ferguson, Jenny Povey, and Stephanie Plage in the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The data presented are drawn from an Australian Research Council-funded project with nine industry partners [LP 100100380]. These partners provided in-kind and cash support.

Notes on contributors

Joshua Newman

Joshua Newman is a lecturer at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. His research interests include processes of public policy, such as success, failure, capacity, learning, and the interaction between the public and private sectors.

Adrian Cherney

Adrian Cherney is a senior lecturer in the School of Social Science, at the University of Queensland. His research interests include evidence-based policy, police and ethnic group relations, counter-terrorism policing, offender re-entry and institutional legitimacy.

Brian W. Head

Brian W. Head is professor of policy and evaluation at the University of Queensland, and previously worked in government. His research interests include evidence-based policy, collaborative governance, policy capacity, complex ‘wicked’ problems, program evaluation, accountability, and various aspects of social and environmental policy.